Tuesday, 8 May 2012

These are a series of limited palette
colour charts done at the start of the year- they are a simplified
version of the legendary Richard Schmid colour mixing exercise. It's
a relatively simple means of understanding your pigments- in this
case, the charts are meant for figurative and portraiture painting in
the studio. Also, I get to learn a lot more about specific
characteristics of some of the paints currently floating about in my
studio. Gotta do them while I still am young and reckless enough to
have free time, I suppose ;)

First chart shows all the colours used
in the limited palette- the subsequent charts are each column from
the top-most chart (pure colours on the left-most sides of each
subsequent charts) mixed with the other colours from the limited set
(so the top row on the second chart is Yellow Ochre, then yellow
ochre + Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre + Burnt Sienna, etc all lightened
down with white). Colours used are (from left) Yellow Ochre, Cadmium
Red, Burnt Sienna, Terra Verte, Cobalt Blue, and Mars Black.

Several observations:

Yellow Ochre, or more
specifically, the variety that I was using, was too brickish and low
value (so by default I cannot get relatively chromatic greens and
oranges, even when mixed with Cadmium Red). The remedy to this would
be to replace the ochre with a lighter value equivalent, or to use
an earth colour like Mars Yellow, giving slightly richer
secondaries.

Using a limited set or palette of
convenience means that it's more difficult to get vibrant mixtures.
You don't have the luxury of selecting a warm/cool set for each
colour (something like Cad. Red/Crimson Alizarin, Lemon Yellow/Cad.
Yellow Deep, Cobalt Blue/Phthalo Blue Deep), so the pigments you
have should be of the highest quality and specific to the task at
hand. The Munsell Student Colour Book is pretty helpful in this
regard, there's a chapter on practical pigments for successful
colour mixing.

Drying times- cadmiums take a
relatively long time to dry compared with the earth pigments, so
there might be problems with a figure painting pose that is to be
continued the day after (you will inevitably smudge the support when
oiling it at the start of a new session the next day), so
substituting it with a similar red, like Pyrrole-based reds
(comparatively faster drying with the same relative chroma, and
cheap!), much like using Mars Black instead of Ivory Black. Then
again, you can just mix a bit of drying oil or Liquin into your
white paint or red mixture (or use lead white instead).

With something as technical as this,
it's pretty easy to get caught up with specifics, and mechanically
finishing off these charts as part of a 'to do' list. It's no
shortcut to becoming a colour boss, but it'll greatly help it if
you've got some sort of reference lying about in the studio
environment- would be quite handy in the long run and you get to
understand the specifics of the pigments you are using. Cuts the time
wasted trying paints when painting out in the field. Know your
materials!

Will definitely revisit these colour
charts several years from now with these points in mind. There's more
practical things to do in the meantime (like, actually starting to
draw and paint).

About Me

This blog is mainly a portfolio and ongoing attempt at showing progress in various art-related projects.
There are: works in progress, sketches, and ongoing things at my studio. Occasionally older sketchbook material and paintings. For any questions or queries about any paintings shown send an email to: ritom.art@gmail.com